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August 25, 2010

Our Hollywood brethren have broadcast the myth that the essential qualifications for manliness can be boiled down to the bicep and the grunt, and the influence of this stalks our streets all too evidently, its knuckles knocking the sidewalks. It has been particularly effective in the English-speaking world, where the idea of intelligent writing has been reduced to such choice phrases as ‘Gr8 2 c u’. I shudder. Helping all this along is the prevailing Anglophone cultural arrogance that usually makes us unilingual. We readily dismiss the majority of the globe’s people since they are unable to speak English. And this is our loss.

I confess to being a victim of the aforementioned arrogance. At school, French was introduced at age 11, but the tuition was pitched at the least able, and the least able was unfortunately illiterate in English. Not much hope there. German began at 13, with similar ineffectiveness. The education system being what it was, nobody was compelled to continue with these foreign tongues after the age of 14. Even then, there was no clear idea put forward for why learning these languages might be an advantage. Since then, moves have been afoot to steer certain people away from language learning altogether because it is ‘not useful’. To that end, we might well dispense with school completely, and send young boys of a particular station down the mines at age 12.

Not if I can help it.

I am attempting to correct my own shortcomings, which I greatly regret, and doubtless another spell in Germany won’t do me any harm. For those youngsters currently progressing through school, certainly our first priority is to improve their English. But we should dare also to push them to engage with the other, for in teaching them to speak in tongues, we shall improve their brains. And if we improve their brains, we may make better men (and women) of them.